opinions on attenuators.

[Guitarmageddon]

How do you find the tone of the Express in general?

I love it, flat out it's probably a bit of a dated 80s rock thing, sort of the brown sound. upper mid heavy- though you could change that I guess. Types of valves make a HUGE difference in it.  I also actually really like the cleaner side of it too, quite compressed and warm. But the touch sensitivity is unbelievable it really does go from clean to mean with a twist of your vol knob.
Havent finished this (original) track, but the head is my wreck. It's just dry and I'm not exploiting its dynamics much. pretty well all knobs set at noon.
[soundcloud]https://soundcloud.com/captain-cod/hello-pork-spare-ribs[/soundcloud]

And is it true that TW's don't like pedals?

Pretty much, they hiss quite a bit (without attenuation), effects add to that, and the more you put between the guitar and the amp the less you get that "magic" clean/mean thing. Most guys use a separate wet rig for effects...but, I'll use a delay for clean sounds and a fatpants or similar booster or eq set to cut my signal as a way to quickly reduce my signal to go from the dirty down to the clean. You really never need to do anything to it to get more dirt.

[cooder]

Oh, I also have a simple switchable L Pad attenuator that switches between 6 and 12 dB of attenuation. I basically built it for 5E3's. It sounds really good at 6dB, but sounds like crap at 12dB. I find that it's actually a great attenuator for blackface fender circuits - it seems like a lot of times, attenuating 6dB us all you need with those circuits (unless you're the guy playing a twin reverb in a small bar ).

It's pretty money with a deluxe reverb for the bars I typically play. Turn everything to 6 (I like to get 'em cooking), reverb to taste, attenuate 6dB, mic it and point it at my head, BAM - Morgan's in la-la land for the next 4 hours and no one is complaining about the loud guitar player.

Thanks for your advice there, Morgan, sounds like great fun! I should be looking in getting one of those l-Pad attenuators done! Where would I find reliable info / layout for that that you would recommend or have used for yours? Cheers!

How do you find the tone of the Express in general?

I love it, flat out it's probably a bit of a dated 80s rock thing, sort of the brown sound. upper mid heavy- though you could change that I guess. Types of valves make a HUGE difference in it.  I also actually really like the cleaner side of it too, quite compressed and warm. But the touch sensitivity is unbelievable it really does go from clean to mean with a twist of your vol knob.
Havent finished this (original) track, but the head is my wreck. It's just dry and I'm not exploiting its dynamics much. pretty well all knobs set at noon.
[soundcloud]https://soundcloud.com/captain-cod/hello-pork-spare-ribs[/soundcloud]

And is it true that TW's don't like pedals?

Pretty much, they hiss quite a bit (without attenuation), effects add to that, and the more you put between the guitar and the amp the less you get that "magic" clean/mean thing. Most guys use a separate wet rig for effects...but, I'll use a delay for clean sounds and a fatpants or similar booster or eq set to cut my signal as a way to quickly reduce my signal to go from the dirty down to the clean. You really never need to do anything to it to get more dirt.

And thanks for that, Ben! Great sound, great playing and I'm looking forward to getting my TW Express on the way maybe next winter....
I've got a set of Marstran TW trannies sitting here for a while now begging for attention 

[Morgan]

Oh, I also have a simple switchable L Pad attenuator that switches between 6 and 12 dB of attenuation. I basically built it for 5E3's. It sounds really good at 6dB, but sounds like crap at 12dB. I find that it's actually a great attenuator for blackface fender circuits - it seems like a lot of times, attenuating 6dB us all you need with those circuits (unless you're the guy playing a twin reverb in a small bar ).

It's pretty money with a deluxe reverb for the bars I typically play. Turn everything to 6 (I like to get 'em cooking), reverb to taste, attenuate 6dB, mic it and point it at my head, BAM - Morgan's in la-la land for the next 4 hours and no one is complaining about the loud guitar player.

Thanks for your advice there, Morgan, sounds like great fun! I should be looking in getting one of those l-Pad attenuators done! Where would I find reliable info / layout for that that you would recommend or have used for yours? Cheers!

Use this: http://www.diyaudioandvideo.com/Calculator/LPad/
Double or triple the power rating of the resistors to be conservative. Use good quality resistors (don't buy the cheap ones on eBay or from Tayda).

The only real issue with this design is typical of all resistive attenuators -  you are using one because you want to drive your amp pretty hard. Driving your amp pretty hard wears down the output tubes and transformers faster than not driving the amp pretty hard. If you look at this particular design, nothing bad can really happen with it. When resistors fail, they typically stop conducting; they don't tend to burn open like a cap sometimes does. So if R1 burns open, the speaker circuit is incomplete and sound stops coming out of it. If R2 burns up, you'll loose attenuation and just have a series CLR in R1 (which will dampen the sound).

[cooder]

Sweet! Great calculating tool, should make it easy enough.
Cheers Morgan!